Greyhound: In The Enemy's Eye

Tom Hanks is back and plays again some kind of Captain in which he has to face personal and professional challenges in the chaos of his profession. We already had the actor as pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger in Sully: The Hudson River Hero back in 2016 and also as Captain Phillips in Captain Phillips (2013). And here, in his new film, Hanks plays Captain Krause in the war drama Greyhound: In the Eye of the Enemy (2020).

The film is a production of Stage 6 and Sony Pictures and had a scheduled release in theaters, until the coronavirus pandemic came and disrupted everyone's plans and caused profound changes in our society. And the sale of the feature to Apple, which arrived in July, seems to serve better with the proposal that the technology giant's platform wants to be: the home of Hollywood big names in streaming. With Greyhound, it becomes clear, more and more, the intention of AppleTV + to be the HBO of the streamings, with few productions throughout each month, but with big names involved in almost all of them.

And Hanks, in addition to acting and starring in the feature, is also responsible for the script that was adapted from the book The Good Shepherd by author CS Forester. And as much as Greyhound: Na Mira do Inimigo gets lost and a lot with a lot of technical issues, and military jargon of the navy, Hanks, as an actor, is primarily responsible for the humanization of the film with his character, a Captain who assumes his first fleet and must lead an American convoy against Nazi submarines at the beginning of World War II.

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Greyhound: At Mira do Inimigo he makes a typical war movie here, the plot is intense and the complications and dilemmas faced by the characters are the same as seen in several other projects. Hanks' character proves to be an officer who, however inexperienced in action, has a great theoretical baggage and a keen sense for his instincts and manages to get rid of many things. And throughout the film we see the character dealing with all the difficulties of the war and of course ensuring that he and his soldiers come out alive from the trap that German troops create throughout the plot. 

And blessed be the few 1h30 that the film has, of course, aside from the protagonist, we see little development of the other characters, and just as the Captain does, we hardly recognize their names throughout the film. Apart from the Captain's relationship with the waiter on board Clevaland (Rob Morgan), we have almost no character development, we know nothing more than their positions within the hierarchy of the American navy of the time.

And the film takes advantage of that to tell its story in a very fast and mind-boggling way. While waiting for air support to arrive, the crew aboard the Greyhound has to do everything to stay alive. The most interesting thing is the way that director Aaron Schneider manages to capture the apprehension and feeling of terror emblazoned on the face of the ship's members and their Captain who know that every moment the radar beeps can be the time that an enemy submarine can arise to attack the great American ship. 

The threat of the invisible enemy that comes through the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean and creates a feeling of latent and palpable tension that the crew is able to disguise due to military training. Greyhound: In the enemy's sight delivers an extremely technical film, but the emotions and performances of little-known faces that are not well known to the general public, manage to set a tone for the film that makes us want to know what will happen.

With strong and heavy special effects, Greyhound: At Mira do Inimigo uses small and closed places to create a feeling of distress and anguish about how those figures managed to spend all those hours on alert and use all their technical knowledge to get away from the traps and the psychological pressure that the so-called Nazi Gray Wolf imposes on radio waves.

In the end, Greyhound: Na Mira do Inimigo delivers an extremely patriotic film that shows the figure of yet another American hero at the hands of one of his most well-known and beloved actors. With a very high production value, the film becomes another highlight in AppleTv + programming that begins to crawl in the formation of a more robust catalog. 

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